OSF NAMED ONE OF TOP FIVE REGIONAL THEATERS IN THE U.S. BY TIME MAGAZINE

OSF Ranks Second After Chicago’s Goodman Theater

Ashland, Ore.—The Oregon Shakespeare Festival and regional theater across the United States received a huge boost this weekend. An article in Time magazine (6/2/03) by theatre writer Richard Zoglin named OSF number two among the top five regional theatres and headlined regional theater as “Bigger than Broadway.”
     Spending the last few months surveying regional theaters, Mr. Zoglin visited OSF in late April and attended the world premiere of David Edgar’s two-play cycle, Continental Divide, (a co-production with Berkeley Repertory Theatre).  The “six hours of dense, unruly, sometimes maddening, always engrossing drama … is just the latest sign that challenging American theater is alive and well and nowhere near Broadway,” he writes.
      Mr. Zoglin notes that OSF is one of the few U.S. companies that performs in rotating repertory, offering a mix of 11 classical and contemporary plays over an eight-month season. He praised OSF’s and other regional theaters’ willingness to produce less conventional fare. Regional theaters, he says, “are pursuing whole chunks of the repertory that New York, with its commercial press and unforgiving critics, largely ignores. And local audiences are getting a better taste of the possibilities of theater than most New Yorkers get in an entire season.”

     “We’re extremely pleased that OSF is numbered among the top five regional theaters in the country,” says OSF Artistic Director Libby Appel. “But the most important aspect of this article is the recognition that the center of gravity for creating the most significant work in the American theater has shifted from New York City. Regional theaters all over this country, including our own OSF, are creating powerful and life-changing theatrical experiences for our audiences.”
     In addition to Chicago’s Goodman Theater, the other top three regional theaters, ranked three, four and five, are American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota and South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California.
     The article is available in the June 2, 2003 issue of Time, or visit http://www.time.com/.